Reminiscent of 1692: A Modern Missouri Witch-hunt

The following article was submitted to Process.org by “J. Bean” – a false memory expert who has been closely following the Mohler cases and attending the hearings….

Western Missouri Condemns Without Trial

By J. Bean (A Skeptic in Kansas City)

“[For law enforcement officers] the level of proof necessary for taking action on allegations of criminal acts must be more than simply the victim alleged it and it is possible…. We need to be concerned about the distribution and publication of unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre sexual abuse.”- Kenneth Lanning, FBI
Dressed in orange jumpsuits and shackled at their wrists, ankles, and waists, six members of the Mohler family shuffle past local television news cameras and into a courtroom. Tethered together, they resemble fish on a stringer with the proud authorities displaying their catch.  On-the-spot reporters read the charges against them,“Forcible rape of a child; Deviate sexual assault; Use of a child in a sexual performance…”  Newspaper accounts are perhaps even more harsh: The men’s booking photos are posted beneath headlines such as “Incest Allegations Shatter Public image of Church-Going Clan”, [1] or “Child-Raping Missouri Family May Have Bodies in Yard”. [2 ] Posted on the internet  beneath these stories  are reader  comments reminiscent of 1692; judgments of guilt  and cries for harsh punishment along with suspicions cast upon any who question the charges dominate the boards.
The men are 76 year old Burrell Mohler Sr., his four sons, Burrell “Ed” Jr., David, Jared, and Roland, and Burrell Sr.’s 72 year old brother, Darryl Mohler. The arrests were made in November 2009, by Lafayette County, Missouri authorities based on accusations of ritualistic crimes against Ed Mohler’s (now adult) children from 1988 to 1995. The charges against the men involve numerous alleged child rapes, sodomies, and bestiality. They are also publicly accused of kidnapping, various murders, producing child pornography, breeding then slaughtering babies, performing forced abortions on minors, and holding an unwilling sex-slave for years in the family basement, although there have been no charges filed for those allegations.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Santorum and the Superbowl: symptoms of a homosexually repressed nation

Looking, with an outsider’s eye, at the American political debates -- rife with anti-homosexual fear-mongering -- and at the enshrined annual tradition of the Superbowl -- for all its primal enthusiasm directed toward tights-wearing men rollicking about an open field, piling upon one another in sporting competition, exchanging impassioned caresses upon each other’s buttocks at the sidelines -- one can’t help but conclude that repressed homosexuality is a driving force (perhaps thee driving force) behind modern American Culture.

It has long been recognized that anti-homosexual outrage -- homophobia -- is often itself a symptom of repressed homosexual desire. In fact, in 1996, researchers put this idea to the test and found that of men divided into categories of “homophobic” and “non-homophobic”, “Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli”. Based on the profiles of their subjects, the researchers concluded, “Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”*

Consider Rick Santorum and his frenzied anti-gay rhetoric. Clearly ‘light in the loafers’ himself, it hardly takes a PhD in Psychology to discern the repressed longings that torment Santorum’s shame-filled sleepless nights (Read the rest...)

DRACO: Death to the Virus

In a paper published 27 July, researchers from MIT reported successful tests in mice with a new drug that holds the promise of being a cure to all viruses. The drug, DRACO (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer), works as a “broad-spectrum” antiviral, killing virus-hijacked cells by targeting double-stranded RNA produced in the viral replication process. DRACO proved successful against all 15 viruses tested “including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.”

We may expect results from cell trials against AIDS within the next 12 months.  ...Read More

Black Friday, the annual Moron March

Beginning with the “Black Friday” sales panic annually observed, the Holiday Season in the American tradition is generally recognized to run from the day after Thanksgiving till the anticlimactic sales moratorium of December 25th. Black Friday is the gunshot start of a month-long consumerist frenzy marked by broken bones, scattered bodies, and impoverishing excess. Christmas itself has become really nothing more than a cease-fire. The “true spirit” of the Holidays has long been best reflected in Black Friday. This is the day in which celebrants are free to abandon any individual sense of decency and responsibility to become a part of the larger shopping mob. Year by year the brutality grows more severe, earlier and earlier consumers mindlessly congeal into riotous hordes outside major retail outlets during the predawn hours preparing their disorganized assaults with savage mania.   ...Read more

Bessel van der Kolk & the Disappearing Coauthor

"Repressed memories" brought into consciousness by means of hypnotic regression or other recovered memory therapies have given rise to bizarre folkloric narratives of alien abduction and past lives. Defenders of the notion of recovered memory accuracy typically ignore questions regarding these particular types of "memories" while insisting that nothing like a false memory syndrome exists. Finding themselves in intellectually untenable territory when arguing for the legitimacy of recovered memory testimony, the believer is often fond of producing a laundry list of citations of recovered memory research. The quantity of citations is meant to cow the inquirer into conceding that there must indeed be quite a bit of science supporting their position. 

As it turns out, none of the research is very good -- relying heavily on poor retrospective surveys, misinterpreted data, and downright dishonesty. Doctors Harrison Pope (in His book Psychology Astray) and Richard McNally (in Remembering Trauma) have done excellent work in scrutinizing the many errors in recovered memory research, but I hope to highlight certain illustrative examples here on this blog. If you have a particular study you'd like me to look at, please let me know.
 
Bessel van der Kolk is something of a hero to recovered memory believers, but the deposition taken below (by Dr. Christopher Barden), as part of a trial in which van der Kolk was acting as an expert witness, reveals some grave questions regarding his scientific rigor.  Following this deposition, van der Kolk vanished from the expert witness roster.

The below was previously available online elsewhere. I have retained the original introduction by Dr. Barden:

Dr. Faye Snyder & the Empty-Headed Theory

Dr. Faye Snyder's "Causal Theory" is nothing new, and you really can't be blamed for not having heard of it --or her -- at all. Among the unlimited morass of unscientifically formulated Self Help get-well-quick schemes, Dr. Faye Snyder's 8-DVD 16-hour Miracle Child Parenting seminar series -- available for an "introductory price!" of $199.95 -- anonymously blends in the mire, unremarkable and largely unnoticed.

"Dr. Faye" (as she prefers to be called) promotes herself as "the originator of the Causal Theory", which she describes on her website as,

[...] a progressive, if controversial, theory based upon cause and effect.  It assumes that there are no genetic causes for behavior.  Rather, it assumes that personality and behavior, including and especially adult behavior, result from childhood experiences beginning from birth, and perhaps even before.  It includes attachment theory, lessons from trauma theory, family systems theory, and some behavioral and cognitive models.  I imagine it has a splash of Zen, as well.

Many people, I believe (even those unschooled in Psychology... or Zen), will recognize this "blank slate" mode of thinking as far from progressive. It is, in fact, clearly regressive... a crass and sophomoric articulation of early behaviorist thought. The idea that "experiences" from before one's birth may presumably be remembered and play some role in future behavioral adjustment reveals just how much Dr. Faye doesn't know about human development.

Dolphin Porn, Norwich University, and the Work of Jesus

"Another auxiliary project, one that brought in proceeds, was dolphin pornography. Dolphin porn was filmed in Malibu and in the dolphin tanks at Point Mugu. It was convenient because they had cages already built and so the dolphins could be housed there for use almost anytime. [Ronald] Reagan really loved the dolphin stuff. He watched a porn video of [my daughter] Kelly and I with a couple of dolphins. During the viewing he smiled, patted my leg and said, "I'll be with you later." He wasn't into sex with children and didn't have sex with my daughter. When the film was over he said, "Watching you do underwater ballet is beautiful, but seeing you with the dolphin is out of this world!" He laughed and looked up, like he was seeing a missile or shuttle launch. Lots of dolphin porn was filmed. I believe Bob [Hope] gave copies of it to Prince Charles, Prince Phillip and Margaret Thatcher, who is a lesbian."
                                              -- Brice Taylor, Thanks for The Memories

'Porno for Paranoids' is perhaps the only genre description worthy of Brice Taylor's prurient and demented Thanks for The Memories. In this perverse magnum opus, Taylor describes -- aside from her stint as an actress in dolphin porn -- how she was used as a sex slave by nearly all of the rich & famous of her time, from Henry Kissinger to Bob Hope (whom she described as her "owner").

So over-the-top is Brice Taylor's narrative that it is, of course, believed by certain advocates of Recovered Memory Therapies who, as a matter of commitment, simply must believe any and every tale that invokes Repressed Memories and their later re-surfacing. The opening pages of Thanks for The Memories are filled with endorsements, among which we find:

BOBBI GAGNE-May the love and compassion you have shown for countless survivors return to you multiplied. Thank you for educating many in the field of law enforcement so they may now help victims who are still suffering. Thank you for doing what Christ would do! I love you!